I hope all you armchair psychologists and students of human nature have been watching and taking notes these past few months. If you have a passion for a dispassionate analysis of human behavior, this is indeed a Golden Era, the likes of which you won't see again (God help us) in your lifetime.
I consider this is a Golden Era in deviant psychology because of the hailstorm of rationalization, justification, blame-throwing, self-delusion, mendacity and outright hallucination that's been flying through the air over the decision to wage war on Iraq. Between the CYA memoirs, talk-show tap dances and bloviating bloggers, every war hawk in the country has an answer or three about why the conflict is getting worse. And the answer undoubtedly is: someone else.
It started six months ago in the November issue of Vanity Fair. In David Rose's article "Neo Culpa," think-tank war aficionados like Richard Perle and David Frum assured us that their ideas and rationale for knocking down and reassembling the Iraqi government were correct. No one should lay the blame in their in-box. They had "no idea" that the Bush administration would be so incompetent. "No idea." If this kind of thinking is typical in a think tank, we should start treating them like drunk tanks, i.e., a place where someone can be locked up for a while and stopped from engaging in destructive behavior.
As Iraq descends from hotspot to failed state to hellhole, no one who's ever uttered a peep of support for the invasion has come out and admitted that from Day One it was a hare-brained idea. The chorus seems to be, "The invasion had every chance of working--the problem lay in the administration/ generals/ troops/ media/ Sunnis/ Shiites/ Chi-Lites/ dementors/ Bud Selig/ will of the American people." Starting your barbecue with a quart of gasoline is a workable idea in theory, but when you set your garage on fire, it's stupid to go blaming the combustible properties of wood.
Now we have George Tenet's poor-me memoir about miscommunication with the White House. What's a CIA director to do when, in meeting after meeting, no one will listen to his caveats, unspoken though they may be?
As galling as it is to watch war supporters refuse to admit they were wrong, it's maddening to watch the Democratic candidates who voted for the invasion refuse to denounce it. Their handlers are undoubtedly telling them it's never good to admit a mistake, or to look weak by denouncing war. I'm not asking for an apology - that's Oprah's job. But I'd like someone somewhere to say, "God, I was such an idiot to believe this war was winnable. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! (slaps head repeatedly)" C'mon guys, it's what everyone's thinking anyway.
Why is a good look in the mirror so damnably hard? Maybe the Beltway city slickers are too embarrassed that they fell for the lies of Cheney and Bush, feeling like Eddie Albert on Green Acres getting suckered by Mr. Haney. Maybe the talking heads are afraid to admit they fell for a con job because it might force them out of the TV green rooms and into comparatively more honest work, like the law. Maybe all the back-pedaling, finger-pointing and logic shredding is preferable to admitting that they surrendered their sound judgment to fear and a hankering for revenge against some nation -- any nation -- in the Gulf.
Whatever the reason, I can't help thinking about the old fairy tale of "The Fisherman's Wife," in which the poor fisherman catches a talking fish. The fish pleads for its life, telling him that it can grant any wish. For every wish the fisherman makes, his wife takes it a notch higher until she insists that the sun and moon rise only at her command. In the end, they're as poor as when they started. The usual moral is that greed can become insatiable.
My only thought when I read it is, "Hey asshole, you got outsmarted by a fish!"